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Former Daimler Truck Head Renschler Headed to Volkswagen

The former head of Daimler Trucks, who left the company last month after less than a year of overseeing Mercedes Benz cars and vans at parent company Daimler AG, will be taking over responsibility for commercial vehicles at Volkswagen AG.

Andreas Renschler will become a member of VW's board of management effective Feb. 1, 2015, once a non-compete agreement with Daimler is over. He will take over for Dr. Leif Östling, who will continue to work with the commercial vehicles supervisory bodies in the Volkswagen Group. VW produces commercial vehicles under the Volkswagen name, as well as the Scania and MAN names overseas.

(Volkswagen also announced late Friday that it had made an offer to acquire the outstanding shares of the Swedish truck maker Scania it doesn’t already own for a cash deal of 6.7 billion euros, or about $9.2 billion.)

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“We are very pleased we have been able to recruit Mr. Renschler to join our company, thanks to the initiative and efforts of Mr. Östling," said Prof. Dr. Ferdinand K. Piëch, chairman of the supervisory board of Volkswagen AG, in a statement. "We have found the ideal successor for Mr. Östling when he retires from the Board of Management next year. I am particularly pleased that Mr. Östling has agreed to contribute his experience to our commercial vehicles business in a supervisory board capacity."

The 55-year-old Renschler holds degrees in business engineering and business administration. He joined Daimler-Benz AG in 1988 and began setting up the production facility in Tuscaloosa, Ala., in 1993.

Renschler switched to the corporate headquarters in 1999, where he was responsible for executive management development at the former DaimlerChrysler corporation. He was appointed president of smart GmbH from 1999. He was named member of the Daimler AG board of management in 2004, holding responsibility for Daimler Trucks and Daimler Buses until March 2013, subsequently taking charge of manufacturing and procurement at Mercedes-Benz cars and the Mercedes-Benz vans business unit from April 2013.

Renschler left Daimler abruptly in January. He was seen as one of the top contenders to replace Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the board of management of Daimler AG and head of Mercedes-Benz cars, when he decides to retire.